Compostable Plastic? $130 Million Investor Dollars Are Betting on It.
I was thinking about my lunch today: I used a tortilla that came in a plastic bag, on which I spread hummus from a plastic tub, followed by a bed of spinach that came in a plastic bag, topped with a layer of tofu that came in a plastic tub and was cooked in a largely plastic air fryer. Every single one of those pieces of plastic will outlive me for centuries. And that’s just for one meal in one day of the tens of thousands of days I’ll likely live.
Hopefully all that plastic will be tucked into a landfill at least, but it will remain nonetheless.
Every piece of plastic you’ve ever used still exists somewhere on the planet, from the ziplock bag of leftovers to the bag of chips to the packaging holding in all the grapes you picked up at the store. We used to ship all of our plastic waste to China, but in 2017 they stopped taking it, so the vast majority of our plastic, including what we put in the recycling bin, at the very best just ends up in a landfill, and at the worst ends up in the ocean.
Enter TIPA, an Israeli startup promising to revolutionize plastic packaging by making it fully compostable. That means you could take the bag your grapes come in and just put it in your backyard compost. That’s a big deal, because a lot of packaging labeled “compostable” is actually only compostable under industrial composting conditions which are much higher heat than what you’d typically get in a home composting system or if the product ends up in nature.
TIPA’s already raised $130 million USD in venture capital funding, employs more than 60 people in Israel, the US, and Europe, has developed numerous plastic replacement products that are now sold on several continents, recently acquired another startup in the space, and is working feverishly scale further so they can turn off the faucet of plastic pollution humanity is dumping into our environment every year.
It was a real pleasure to talk wtih TIPA’s founder and CEO, Daphna Nissenbaum, on the latest episode of the Business for Good Podcast. we chat about her journey from a software engineer to a plastic revolutionary, what the difference between biodegradable and compostable is, what her alt-plastic is actually made of, and more.
Most entrepreneurs dream of having the success Daphna’s had so far in terms of fundraising and product launches, so it was fun to hear her story.
Hopefully their success will help make it easier for humanity to wind down the plague of plastic we’re putting into the environment at a rapid pace. I’d feel a lot better about my lunch today if so!
